Utah is on the verge of having the best K-12 online learning policy in the country. SB65 makes provision for multiple statewide providers and student choice to the course level.
While high schools around the country are cutting expensive courses, students in Utah high schools this fall may have access to every AP course, any foreign language, and high level STEM courses rich with computer simulations. Assuming bill passage, students that are struggling will have several personalized options that will allow them to catch up.
SB65 encourages providers to support completion by withholding 40 percent of the funding until the student successfully finishes a course. The bill expands options and creates the opportunity for students to graduate early. More options, better outcomes, reduced costs --it's a good deal for Utah students, schools, and taxpayers.
The bill reflects the recommendations of Digital Learning Now, a December report from an expert panel co-chaired by former governors Jeb Bush and Bob Wise.
Super-advocate Robyn Bagley of Parents for Choice in Education and Open High School organized a capital breakfast for legislators this morning. Michael Horn of the Innosight Institute shared findings from his book Disrupting Class, co-authored with local hero Clayton Christensen. Michael thinks online learning is an important disruption to ineffective historical education practices because it is affordable, scalable, flexible, and a mode natural for students.
Horn was great, but a panel of sophomores from Open High was the highlight for senators and representatives, and school board member. They mentioned ten benefits of online learning:
1. I can work ahead if I'm able to
2. I get nearly instant responses from my teachers
3. I get personalized support when I need it
4. My teachers are just as excited about online learning as I am
5. I can do all my math for the week on one day if I want to
6. I know how I'm doing, my grades are right on the screen
7. My parents can see my work and grades
8. My courses are more challenging
9. I can keep up with my work when my family travels
10. I can work around a busy schedule
Utah has a history of innovation in education. Utah was an early leader in distance learning with Electronic High School but the content is dated and it's funded through a supplemental appropriation (which is not sustainable or scalable). Utah also gave birth to Western Governor's University, a leader in affordable competency-based higher education. Gov Leavitt was a leader in the development of early college high schools where student can earn an AA degree with their high school diploma. Open High School is a statewide virtual high school making extensive use of open education resources.
Mickey Revenaugh, Connections Academy, and I represented the International Association for K-12 Online Learning (iNACOL) at the breakfast.
Utah is at the bottom of average per pupil funding in the U.S. but near the top in terms of the tax burden per capita as a result of youngest demographic distributions in the country. School funding isn't going to get better any time soon. Many legislators realize that they'll need to incorporate online learning to expand options, boost achievement, and do it for less. Sen. Howard Stephenson, the bill sponsor, thinks SB65 fits the bill.
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Horn lists "my courses are more challenging"--but what does that mean? That more content can be memorized, faster? This vision of on-line education is an efficiency model, but where is the depth, the application, the personal engagement and creative, interactive use of content? Where is the student in this vision?
I worry when I read seductive language like this--"affordable, scalable, flexible"--because none of it has to do with quality of learning. Reminds me of Bill Gates' famous quote--that we should be putting the best teachers' "lectures" on video, to more efficiently share their expertise. Teaching isn't telling, and learning isn't listening, whether you're listening through headphones or in person.
The comments from the students--they can get ahead on their homework using on-line learning--reveal the lack of innovation. Same old, same old. Only now we get to use computers.
What's exciting about the sector is all the 2.0 components & tools out there. It's almost possible to pull together an engaging, student-centered, competency-based school.
This misses the larger point. The problem with education right now is that it's less and less relevant to the type of learning we can now do in online communities and networks and elsewhere. My kids don't need teachers and curriculum, online or otherwise, in the same way that the system has provided them for 150 years. Learning is about exploration, experience, creating, not passing digital unit tests and final exams around information that they'll most likely forget six months after the course ends. But we're so wedded to this one very traditional picture of how "learning" is transacted, one that was created for a much different time, that we just can't seem to focus on really changing the system instead of tinkering on the edges with new forms of delivery.
I'll ask again: what's different here?
You and the other folks looking for deeper learning may appreciate this sketch
http://edreformer.com/2011/02/high-school-design-that-asks-big-questions/
So I guess I'm saying it takes some training and/or some modeling of these types of strategies for teaching and designing learning activities. It would be nice to for example have some master database of excellently designed and openly licensed modules or learning communities for kids, along with some online professional development resources - sort of like an online center for teaching and learning, except for K-12 (although higher education needs such a resource even more, too).
The phrase "ineffective historical education practices" is code words for public schools-the way you all on the Right portray them at least. As an education professional I recognize online learning as an important tool to help students learn, but absolutely positively NOT a replacement for real classrooms.
Tell me, how do you do AP Chem online? You got a lab at home?
Kids very badly need an education that is customized to their abilities - not forcing them to sit in classes where they struggle so that their ineptitude is obvious to everyone (it only gets worse when their teachers baby them during class discussion). We also hold kids back in those areas where they are gifted. Even when they are able to take an AP class, many gifted kids are ready to go in all kinds of directions - but their classroom constricted learning means they can never go any faster than the "lowest common denominator in their class".
As far as Biology Lab goes, new technologies are coming out that could put this argument to rest. Imagine using Microsoft Kinect with capable software that allows you to run ANY kind of lab you want to with absolutely no restrictions on what you can afford or what is safe to use in the lab.
Public school teachers are just scared to death that they will be replaced. The future is full of potential - too many of us are stuck in the safe and ineffective status quo.
Public Education in school buildings (and probably all public schooling) is on its last leg. Privatizing and deregulating education will bring incredible rewards.
Out with the old, in with the new. What was of value
New school models that blend online and onsite build in between 1-5 days a week on site with lots of interaction, application, extension.
The link http://www.openhighschool.org/ provides more details, easy to navigate. No charge, lap-top assigned at the start of the year, four class minimum requirement, early graduation...
I wonder if it's ever been attempted in a classroom setting. Example; Math class, when a student learns addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, they simply close up their lap-top and moves to the algebra class.
Really curious as to how motivating the "early graduation" benefit is to students.
An Innosight.org study that came out last week featured 40 models that blend online and onsite.